Tunguska meteor was an object from space that entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over central Russia in 1908. The blast has also been called the Tunguska event. It is the largest meteor strike on Earth in recorded history. Few people witnessed the meteor because it fell in an isolated area with little population. Scholars studied the explosion and the damage it caused many times over the following years.
The strike happened on the morning of June 30. The few eyewitnesses reported seeing a bright, glowing streak called a fireball in the air over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia . A fireball generally occurs as a meteor heats up through contact with the air, causing it to glow brightly as it moves across the sky. In a few moments, the meteor broke apart in a huge explosion about 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 kilometers) above the ground. The blast knocked people off their feet, shattered windows, and flattened trees. The energy released was many times greater than that released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima , Japan, in 1945.
Perhaps due to the isolation of the area, there was relatively little immediate investigation of the blast. It was not until the 1920’s that a full expedition to study the strike was arranged. The Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik led the scientific party. He continued his study of the blast until the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).
A major dispute among scientists is whether the object that struck was an asteroid or a comet . Some scholars point out that an icy body, such as a comet, could not make it far into Earth’s atmosphere before disintegrating. However, the lack of an impact crater and the likely direction of the meteor’s approach suggest a comet.
